Can it still be called a party if it’s just for one person? It can now…

I’m pretty sure that the majority of the population loves pizza. I started craving pizza last week – really heavy, greasy pizza. I didn’t want to order it just for myself (thanks to Kyle for being a positive influence and not always giving in to my requests), and the idea of a frozen pizza wasn’t cutting it. Honestly, I wasn’t about to drive to the store just for a frozen pizza, that’s totally not worth it to me. Thankfully, I had what I needed at home to make a healthy version which took care of my craving and didn’t leave me feeling like I ate my body weight in grease.

By thinking just a little bit outside the box you can make almost any food healthier, and pizza is an easy one.

I used:

• Naan bread for the crust (pita pockets or English muffins are great too, especially for kids)
• Salsa for the sauce
• Veggies – spring mix salad, red onion, red peppers
• Protein – ground turkey (pre-cooked)
• Cheese – Allegro jalapeno and cottage cheese

Easy pizza creation… and some ice cream while I waited for it to cook because I was starving. Caramel coconut blondie ice cream – so good!

Instructions:

Make a pizza…  throw it under the broiler for about 10 minutes until the crust is hard and everything is heated through. How easy is that? I added a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese to the top because three cheeses are better than two.

The Allegro cheese is a recent find at the grocery store. It’s one of the better cheese options as it’s macro nutrient breakdown is pretty good.

We don’t buy cheese very often, but this is a great choice. We find it in the deli section fridges with the other classy cheeses.

Outside the kitchen, the week was pretty hectic. Tonight will be the only free evening I’ve had all week (if you can count grocery shopping and food prep “free”). We added an extra training session to our week on Tuesday evenings, which has been good, but it kills another night. Last night I attended a public mental health seminar for work which was great (Parenting in High Stress was the topic of this talk), but again, I was left with no evening at home.  I was very happy to get back to the gym this week, but it was exhausting jumping right back into “normal” mode after being a sloth for a week.

I’m not sure what the cause is, but I have not been sleeping well lately, even though I’ve been so wiped out. I’m not sure if I completely threw my body off track with all the napping and sleeping in I did after my wisdom teeth came out, but this week was brutal! From being too hot, too cold, needing to pee, being sore and generally uncomfortable (yes, that wakes me up), and then the cat screaming in my face… it seemed never ending. Last night I took some melatonin about half an hour before going to bed and managed to sleep straight through the night! Success!

Cats never sit still…. at least she stopped trying to knock the bottle off the counter long enough to get a picture.

Melatonin is a hormone naturally made by the body, but can also be purchased at drug and health food stores (found in the vitamin section). Melatonin release is triggered by the lack of sunlight and lasts about 12 hours – giving our body that circadian rhythm to sleep during the night. Honestly, research on the effectiveness of melatonin is pretty spotty (inconclusive), but it’s always seemed to help me. It might just be the placebo effect, but I don’t care what the research says as long as I get a good night’s sleep out of it. Some studies have found that it helps decrease the amount of time it takes to fall asleep, and also in reducing the number of times you wake up through the night (which is my problem).  I never take it for long, just a few days in a row, then I stop and am usually back to my normal, solid sleeping habits again.

Hope you have a great weekend, full of lots of sleep and maybe some pizza! 😉